I have so much adoration and respect for this man and his brilliance, just now finding out he has stage four lung cancer... He was diagnosed late 2010. Incredible to see him talk about it in interviews--I watched a few on youtube the other night. He practically had me in tears, so sad.

Obviously not a debate, he just belongs in this section. Maybe I'll post some of my favorite quotes from him tomorrow or late tonight.

Talented writer I guess. I haven't read God is Not Great but I already find myself agreeing with Eagleton when he says that Hitchens and Dawkins take an easy way out and attack a fundamentalist strawman of religion.

Oh! Sweet Nuthin'

Quote:

to say god, is to sing god
to sing to god, is to draw near to god
to the nearness that is god

Talented writer I guess. I haven't read God is Not Great but I already find myself agreeing with Eagleton when he says that Hitchens and Dawkins take an easy way out and attack a fundamentalist strawman of religion.

What are religious moderates but fundamentalists who recognize their indefensible position and ad hoc hypothesize to cope with the cognitive dissonance?

What are religious moderates but fundamentalists who recognize their indefensible position and ad hoc hypothesize to cope with the cognitive dissonance?

A whole lot of things. Why do you hold everyone so closely to labels of organized religion? Would you also say that all conservative are Tea Partiers "who recognize their indefensible position and ad hoc hypothesize to cope with the cognitive dissonance"? Actually you probably would...

Oh! Sweet Nuthin'

Quote:

to say god, is to sing god
to sing to god, is to draw near to god
to the nearness that is god

I wouldn't, because that's retarded. You're making me think that you didn't understand what I was saying, considering religious moderates came after fundamentalists (talking about the ideologies, not the labels), as the Tea Party came after conservative politics (not the other way around). I suppose I'll have to elaborate a bit for you.

Religious moderates didn't exist before the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment (arguably with precious few exceptions). Christians back then, for example, didn't have the wealth of good reasons we have now to doubt the literal truth of the Bible. Then comes along Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, et al. Suddenly, pieces of the puzzle start falling into place. The gigantic void that was human knowledge of the natural world begins to resemble a series of gaps, punctuated by reasoned insights. And as time goes on, the gaps get smaller and farther in between.

With every step of scientific progress, religion is thrown anew into disarray. Fresh evidence contradicting scripture is cropping up at an alarming rate. How to respond? This is where the cognitive dissonance comes in. You can't both accept science and believe in the literal truth of the Bible (unless you have superhuman compartmentalizing skills, or maybe schizophrenia). One approach is to flat out reject science (which is almost guaranteed to entail hypocritically taking advantage of it these days). The other is to revise your religious beliefs, twist them around until they no longer appear to be in conflict with science (metaphor this, allegory that, cherry pick some nice verses and ignore the brutal ones). That's the ad hoc hypothesizing. And thus, religious moderates are born, necessitating the contemporary fundamentalist label for contrast.

The point is that both fundamentalists and moderates are wrong for exactly the same reasons, hence the whole "easy way out, fundamentalist straw man" argument being bullshіt. The difference between those two kinds of people is that fundamentalists are usually the ones doing evil in the name of God, and moderates simply enable them (which is just as bad in some ways, and worse in others).

There was no hint of chronology in your first post, I thought you were just suggesting that moderates you disagree with are just fundamentalists with more slippery and convoluted rhetoric.

I don't know maybe you're right, but "arguably with precious few exceptions"? That's hardly arguable, there were lots of Christian intellectuals around before the Renaissance (Thomas Aquinas, Anselm).

Anyways I'm pretty far out of my element here seeing as I don't really know Hitchen's argument. My impression is that he lists off atrocities and wars instigated by organized religion and comes to the conclusion then that God and theism are social ills and should be extinguished. If that's wrong, then sorry, but if it's right I think he's "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" so to speak.

Oh! Sweet Nuthin'

Quote:

to say god, is to sing god
to sing to god, is to draw near to god
to the nearness that is god